Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe’s Trafalgar, Sharpe’s Prey, Sharpe’s Rifles

‘I wouldn’t feed ’em to a pig, sir.’

The Victory had been flying a signal which ordered the British column to form their proper order, which was little more than an encouragement for the slower ships to press on more sail and close the intervals in the line, but now that signal was hauled down and another flew in its place.

‘Prepare for battle, sir,’ Lieutenant Connors reported, though it was scarcely necessary, for every man aboard except the landlubbers like Sharpe had recognized the signal. And the Pucelle, like the other warships, was already preparing, indeed the men had been readying their ship all night.

Sand was scattered on the decks to give the bare-footed gunners a better grip. The men’s hammocks, as they were every morning, were rolled tight and brought on deck where they were laid in the hammock nettings that surmounted the gunwale. The packed hammocks, secured in the net trough and lashed down under a canvas rain cover, would serve as a bulwark against enemy musket fire. Up aloft a bosun was leading a dozen men who were securing the ship’s great yards, from which the vast sails hung, with lengths of chain. Other men were reeving spare halliards and sheets so that heavy coils of rope were forever tumbling through the rigging to thump on the decks. ‘They like slashing our rigging to bits,’ Captain Llewellyn told Sharpe. ‘The Dons and the Frogs both, they like to fire at the masts, see? So the chains stop the yards falling and the spare sheets are there if the others are shot through. Mind you, Sharpe, we’ll lose a stick or two before the day’s out. It rains blocks and broken spars in battle, it does!’ Llewellyn anticipated that dangerous downpour with relish. ‘Is your cutlass sharp?’

‘It could do with a better edge,’ Sharpe admitted.

‘Forrard on the weather deck, ‘Llewellyn said, ‘by the manger, there’s a man with a treadle wheel. He’ll be glad to hone it for you.’

Sharpe joined a queue of men. Some had cutlasses, others had boarding axes while many had fetched down the boarding pikes which stood in racks about the masts on the upper decks. The goats, sensing that their routine had changed, bleated piteously. They had been milked for the last time and now a seaman rolled up his sleeves before slaughtering them with a long knife. The manger, with its dangerously combustible straw, was being dismantled and the goats’ carcasses would be packed in salt for a future meal. The first beast struggled briefly, then the smell of fresh blood cut through the ship’s usual stench.

Some of the men invited Sharpe to go to the head of the queue, but he waited his turn as the nearby gunners teased him. ‘Come to see a proper battle, sir?’

‘You’d never win a scrap without a real soldier, lads.’

‘These’ll win it for us, sir,’ a man said, slapping the breech of his twenty-four-pounder on which someone had chalked the message ‘a pill for Boney’. The mess tables, on which the gunners ate, were being struck down into the hold. As much wooden furniture as possible was removed from the decks above water so that they could not be reduced to splinters that whirled lethally from every strike of enemy shot. Sharpe’s cot and chest were already gone, as was all the elegant furniture from Chase’s quarters. The precious chronometers and the barometer had been packed in straw and taken down to the hold. Some ships hoisted their more valuable furniture high into the rigging in hopes that it would be safe, while others had entrusted it to the ships’ boats that were being launched and towed astern to keep them from enemy gunnery.

A gunner’s mate sharpened the cutlass on the wheel, tested its edge against his thumb, then gave Sharpe a toothless grin. ‘That’ll give the buggers a shave they’ll never forget, sir.’

Sharpe tipped the man sixpence, then walked back down the deck just in time to see the panelled walls of Chase’s quarters being manoeuvred down the quarterdeck stairs on their way to the hold. The simpler wooden bulkheads from the officers’ cabins and the wardroom at the stern of the weather deck had already been struck down so that now, for the first time, Sharpe could see the whole length of the ship, from its wide stern windows all the way to where men swept up the last straw of the manger in the bows of the ship. The Pucelle was being stripped of her frills and turned into a fighting machine. He climbed to the quarterdeck and saw that was similarly empty. The wide space beneath the long poop, instead of holding cabins, was now an open sweep of deck from the wheel to the windows of Chase’s day cabin. The dining cabin had vanished, Sharpe’s quarters were gone, the pictures had been taken below and the only remaining luxury was the black-and-white chequered canvas carpet on which the two eighteen-pounder guns stood.

Connors, stationed on the poop to watch for the flagship’s signals which were being repeated by the frigate Euryalus, called down to Chase. ‘We’re to bear up in succession on the flagship’s course, sir.’ Chase just nodded and watched as the Victory, leading the line, swung to starboard so that she was now heading straight for the enemy. The wind, such as it was, came from directly behind her and Captain Hardy, doubtless on Nelson’s orders, already had men up on his yards to extend the slender poles from which he would hang his studdingsails.

Nine ships behind the Pucelle another three-decker swung to starboard. This was the Royal Sovereign, the flagship of Admiral Collingwood, Nelson’s second-in-command. Her bright copper gleamed in the morning light as the ships behind followed her eastwards. Chase looked from the Victory to the Royal Sovereign, then back to the Victory again. ‘Two columns,’ he said aloud, ‘that’s what he’s doing. Making two columns.’

Even Sharpe could understand that. The enemy fleet formed a ragged line that stretched for about four miles along the eastern horizon and now the British fleet was turning directly towards that line. The ships turned in succession, those at the front of the fleet curling round to make a line behind the Victory and those at the back following in the Royal Sovereign’s wake, so that the two short lines of ships were sailing straight for the enemy like a pair of horns thrusting at a shield.

‘We’ll set studdingsails when we’ve turned, Mister Haskell,’ Chase said.

‘Aye aye, sir.’

The Conqueror, the fifth ship in Nelson’s column and the one immediately ahead of the Pucelle, turned towards the enemy, showing Sharpe her long flank which was painted in stripes of black and yellow. The Conqueror’s gunports, all on the yellow bands, were painted black to give her a half-chequered appearance.

‘Follow her, quartermaster,’ Chase said, then walked to the table behind the wheel where the ship’s log lay open. He dipped the pen in ink and made a new entry. ‘6.49 am. Turned east towards the enemy.’ Chase put the pen down, then took a small notebook and a stub of pencil from his pocket. ‘Mister Collier!’

‘Sir?’ The midshipman looked pale.

‘I will trouble you, Mister Collier, to take this notebook and pencil and to make a copy of any signals you see this day.’

‘Aye aye, sir!’ Collier said, taking the book and pencil from Chase.

Lieutenant Connors, the signal lieutenant, overheard the order from his place on the poop deck. He looked offended. He was an intelligent young man, quiet, red-haired and conscientious, and Chase, seeing his unhappiness, climbed to him. ‘I know that logging the signals is your responsibility, Tom,’ he said quietly, ‘but I don’t want young Collier brooding. Keep him busy, eh? Let him think he’s doing something useful and he won’t worry so much about being killed.’

‘Of course, sir,’ Connors said. ‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Good fellow,’ Chase said, slapping Connors’s back, then he ran back down to the quarterdeck and stared at the Conqueror which had just completed her turn. ‘There goes Pellew now!’ he cried. ‘See how well his fellows spread their wings?’ The Conqueror’s studdingsails, projecting far outboard on either side of her huge square sails, fell to catch the small wind and were sheeted home.

‘It’s a race now,’ Chase said, ‘and the devil take the foremost. Lively now! Lively!’ He was shouting at the men on the main yard who had been slow to release the Pucelle’s studdingsail yards, and doubtless Chase was thinking that Israel Pellew, the Cornishman commanding the Conqueror, would be watching him critically, but the yards were run out handily enough and, the eastwards turn completed, the sails fell with a great slap and flap before the men on deck hauled them tight. The enemy was still hull down on the horizon and the wind scarce more than a whisper. ‘It’ll be a long haul,’ Chase said ruefully, ‘a long, long haul. Are you sure there are no more coffee beans?’ he asked his steward.